when we were young
rocks
were the thing
to throw.
it taught me
a lot about
glass.
(sand and soda)
Sometimes
the rocks
would sail through, nice
and clean, and only
a small
hole, the size
of a golf ball, or
baseball, was made, like
bullets spraying
across a stone
wall. other times
the glass
would shatter
off in
huge chunks, like
countries falling from
a map, and hit the floor –
it made the sound of
a wave crashing
on a
dirty beach.
i guess the more
chemicals, the shittier
the glass
car windows
were my favorite, especially
the windshield. we
dropped boulders from
trees, we
put rocks
into
potato guns,
we even
ran and cannonballed,
but the windshield
never broke
open, and
nothing
ever got through.
instead
these beautiful designs
formed, rings over water, a
thawing pond,
a map of the galaxy.
and after
we were
sweaty
and bleeding
we’d look at our abstraction.
turned a used car lot
into a modern art gallery
sometimes
we took pictures
in high school, they made
us take
art class. We
learned a lot
about
the old masters, and
they were good
but
there always seemed to be
some element
missing.
the mad flash
the knife or the canvas
it never got through.
THE ASSIGNMENT
was to be creative “you
can do anything
that inspires you”
so
we got canvas
and threw paint
and pissed
on it
dumped our burning cigarettes
someone even
jerked off on it
but
it was still lame
and nothing to be proud of
we took mushrooms
to get deeper, and
like mushrooms usually do,
we went out
into
the woods.
i only
remember spiderwebs,
big webs,
lactating
silk
like pure
fresh squeezed milk.
they were so lush
i wanted to eat them.
so i did
i woke up in a hospital two days later
with a fever,
delirious,
and covered in
huge
red bites.
no memory,
but they told me
i had said, “the
webs look
just like
broken glass”
my friends were inspired.
after they called
an ambulance they went
to smash a car
window, and bring the
windshield in
for our
“inspiration project”
but we weren’t
nine anymore-
too much taco bell
and cigarettes
will cut “fleeing the scene”
to “complying
with the law”
very quickly.
everyone who didn’t
go to the hospital that night
went to jail
our teacher was fired
the next monday. Her
replacement had
a psych degree and
we spent the
rest of the year
gluing
pasta together.
we were all safe after that
but none of us
went on
to make something
anybody would ever stop and look at